hey, i would like to share with you about my passion for the Old Testament (OT). my students call me 'rabbi' or 'reb' for short.
the reb's passion in life (apart from God and wife and family) is the OT.
the reb used to teach the OT in a seminary. he also does a lot of weekend teaching and preaching in churches. and he writes and authored 9 books...
email: aloke6@gmail.com

Monday, 5 September 2016

Humble olive pits are prime find at exhibit from ancient city associated with King David

Artifacts from Khirbet Qeiyafa, which dates back 3,000 years to the dawn of the Kingdom of Judah, go on display at Bible Lands Museum for first time

Olive pits may be the afterthought of a meal, but they’re a crucial clue found at a biblical site near Jerusalem that is the focus of a new exhibit, “In the Valley of David and Goliath,” at the capital’s Bible Lands Museum.
Several of the artifacts from Khirbet Qeiyafa, going on public display Monday for the first time, have gripped headlines and imaginations since their discovery. These include a limestone model shrine with elements reminiscent of the First Temple and a Canaanite inscription bearing a biblical name. But a humble handful of charred olive pits — whose radiocarbon dating, to sometime between 1020 and 980 BCE, establishes that Khirbet Qeiyafa dates from the period associated with King David — are the most important, if most easily overlooked.

These rare artifacts from the murky period at the dawn of the Kingdom of Judah serve as the centerpiece of an exhibit which seeks to answer the question: Who were the people of Khirbet Qeiyafa?

“The whole idea was to bring together for the first time all those amazing finds,” curator Yehuda Kaplan told The Times of Israel ahead of the opening. Two years in the making, the exhibit endeavors to “not only to show those items, but to give the visitor the feeling he’s in the ancient city of Qeiyafa.”

Khirbet Qeiyafa’s Iron Age ruins sit perched atop a hill overlooking the Elah Valley, site of the mythical battle between David and Goliath described in the Book of Samuel. That dramatic literary backdrop provides a catalyst to excite visitors about more mundane aspects of archaeology — pottery, architecture and discarded animal bones.

The formation of the Hebrew Bible from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Aleppo Codex

Jennifer Drummond • 11/01/2015

What is the oldest Hebrew Bible? That is a complicated question. The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of the oldest Hebrew Bible text, while the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex are the oldest complete versions, written by the Masoretes in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively. The Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript falls in between the early scrolls and the later codices.

In “Missing Link in Hebrew Bible Formation” in the November/December 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Biblical scholar Paul Sanders discusses the role the Ashkar-Gilson Manuscipt had in bridging the gap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the later Aleppo Codex and Leningrad Codex.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered by Bedouin in 1947. Over 80,000 scroll fragments that came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea site of Khirbet Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls date between 250 B.C.E. and 68 C.E. and represent the largest group of Second Temple Jewish literature ever discovered. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain two types of documents: fragments of the oldest Hebrew Bible texts and writings that—most scholars argue—describe the beliefs and practices of a community of Jews living and writing at the nearby settlement of Qumran.

The Aleppo Codex, the oldest Hebrew Bible that has survived to modern times, was created by scribes called Masoretes in Tiberias, Israel around 930 C.E. As such, the Aleppo Codex is considered to be the most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible. The Aleppo Codex is not complete, however, as almost 200 pages went missing between 1947 and 1957.